-
11 Conclusion: European integration and political conflict*
Gary Marks
Over the past half-century, Europe has experienced the most
radical reallocation of authority that has ever taken place in
peace-time, yet the ideological conflicts that will emerge from
this are only now becoming apparent. This book originated in the
efforts of a group of scholars to investigate the patterns of
conflict - dimensions of contestation - that have arisen from
European integration. The question that motivates us is a broad
one: how does European integration play into the domestic politics
of the member states?1 In this volume, we resolve this abstract
question into a more precise and empirical one: to what extent and
how are the issues arising from European integration connected to
the dimensions of contestation that structure domestic politics? Is
European integration assimilated within the major lines of
conflict, above all the competition between left and right, or is
it unrelated?
Rather than divide Europe by country, each of us examines one
kind of group - citizens, national political parties, social
movements, interest groups, members of the European Parliament, and
European political parties - for the EU as a whole. We engage
several kinds of data, including Eurobarometer surveys, party
manifestos, expert evaluations of party positions, and elite
interviews. We cannot claim to be of a single mind, but we do claim
that we arrive at broadly consistent answers to our question. The
aim of this chapter is to convey their substantive thrust. That our
conclusions are based on analysis of several independent sets of
data for diverse national and European actors reinforces, we think,
their plausibility.
*I would like to thank Liesbet Hooghe for inspiration and ideas,
and Simon Hix, Herbert Kitschelt, Hans-Dieter Klingemann, Fritz
Scharpf, Wolfgang Streeck, Bernhard Wessels, and members of the
research unit on Institutions and Social Change at the
Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin for perceptive comments on this
chapter. I would also like to thank seminar participants at the
Technische Universitat Miinchen and the Max Planck Institute for
Social Research in Cologne to whom this chapter was presented.
1 Our focus is on patterns of contestation (Katz and Wessels
1999; Schmitt and Thomassen 1999), rather than levels of support
for European integration.
235
Gary Marks 236
I propose to set out our findings in steps, beginning, in the
next section, at the aggregate level. To what extent does the
left/right divide constrain views of European integration in
general, across the European Union as a whole? We can answer
simply: there is no robust linear relationship. The relationship we
find is curvilinear: an inverted U-curve, pronounced for political
parties, weak for the general public, created by centrist support
for European integration, and opposition from both left and right
extremes.
-
When we probe beyond the aggregate level, things begin to get
more interesting and more controversial. How has the ideological
fit between European integration and domestic dimensions of
conflict changed over time? Are ideological patterns of support and
opposition to European integration visible at the level of
particular policy areas? Does the ideological fit between domestic
contestation and the issues arising from European integration vary
from country to country, and if so, why? To answer these questions
we have to cut three ways:
By time. European integration is not merely a moving target; its
ideological bearings have
shifted 180 degrees over the past two decades. In the 1980s,
European integration was essentially a market-making project,
favored by the right, less so by the left. By the turn of the
century, the situation was reversed, as left-leaning policies, such
as environmental policy, social policy, and employment policy came
on the agenda.
By issue. Some European issues connect closely to domestic
politics; others do not connect at all. European issues having
distributional consequences within countries are most closely
related to left/right contestation. European issues that affect
national sovereignty relate more closely to new politics
contestation.
By territory. National institutions frame how European issues
map on to domestic cleavages. Some issues play the same way across
countries - and give rise to pure ideological cleavages - while
others evoke contrasting patterns of support and opposition in
different countries. Issues that have consequences for the
allocation of values across countries give rise to national
coalitions.
Our approach is fine-grained because the questions we ask
require it. The devil is in the details. But our aim is not to
confound the reader with complexity. By looking more precisely, we
can observe - and generalize about - patterns of political conflict
that are invisible at the aggregate level.
We have had to abandon our original ambition to arrive at one
simple model that can describe how left/right contestation is
related to support for European integration. We began by setting
out four simple and
European integration and political conflict 237
logically distinctive models, and we continue to find them
useful benchmarks. But no one model is valid for the EU at every
resolution of detail. The thrust of this book is to examine the
conditions under which one or the other model is valid, and this
leads us to inquire into variation across issues and variation
across territory.
Aggregate findings
At the aggregate level - that is to say, when we treat European
integration as a single dimension - the model that best describes
the relationship of European integration to the left/right
dimension over the past two decades is the Hix-Lord model, in which
European integration and left/right positioning are orthogonal to
each other. According to this model, left/right conflict allocates
values among functional groups, whereas European integration
allocates values among territorial groups. Hence, the position that
a person takes on one dimension does not constrain her position on
the other dimension. As we described this model in the
Introduction, all four quadrants are feasible policy options:
left/pro-integration, left/anti integration, right/pro-integration,
and right/anti-integration.
This is confirmed by the chapters in this volume that are
concerned with individual citizens. Matthew Gabel and Christopher
Anderson (chapter 1) find that citizens' views on European
integration are weakly associated with left/right self-placement.
Left/right self-placement has a factor loading of 0.065 in a
one-factor model (model 2) of attitudes towards more EU activity,
far lower than any other item. Cees van der Eijk and Mark Franklin
(chapter 2) find essentially the same thing. Pro-/anti-EU
orientations of voters bear almost no systematic relation to their
left/right self-placement, as illustrated in figure 2.1.
We reject one possible explanation for this non-association,
namely that orientations toward European integration are
unstructured and, consequently, random. Gabel and Anderson find
that attitudes towards European integration in the public at large
are quite well structured. Van der Eijk and Franklin note that
respondents appear to have little difficulty placing themselves on
an EU integration scale. The percentage of missing data for this
scale in their survey of the European electorate is little more
than half that for the left/right scale.2 Respondents are not at a
loss to place themselves on a pro-/anti-European integration scale.
Moreover, as van der Eijk and Franklin point
-
out, respondents locate themselves further toward the extremes
on the EU integration scale than they do on
2 For a contrasting view of the extent to which individual
citizens have structured opinions about European integration'see
Sinnott (1997) and Green (2001).
Gary Marks 238
the left/right scale - an indication that real attitudes towards
the EU are being tapped. Analyses of political parties also
conclude that there is no strong and durable relationship
between left/right positioning and support or opposition to
European integration in general. Liesbet Hooghe, Gary Marks, and
Carole J. Wilson (chapter 6) find a positive linear association
between left/right party position and overall support for European
integration. Right parties are more likely than left parties to
support European integration in general. However, as we discuss
below, they are less likely to support further integration on
issues such as the environment and employment policy.
So there is no overall significant linear association between
European integration, conceived as a whole, and left/right
contestation. This leads van der Eijk and Franklin to describe
European integration as a "sleeping giant." European integration is
orthogonal to the left/right divide, yet it is difficult to
overestimate its substantive importance. European integration has
transformed Europe economically and politically, yet orientations
to it are not constrained by the dimension that chiefly structures
contestation across European societies. If European integration
were to become highly salient, it might therefore become a
combustible issue (Evans 1999).
The inverted U-curve
The most powerful association that we find at the aggregate
level between left/right position and European integration is an
inverted U-curve describing support for European integration among
centrist parties, and opposition among parties toward the extremes
of both left and right (Aspinwall 2002; Hix and Lord 1997; Marks,
Wilson, and Ray 2002; Taggart 1998). Doug Imig (chapter 10) finds
that the bulk of popular contestation oriented directly or
indirectly toward the European Union is anti-integration. Most of
the groups that have organized protests are on the left, but all
are outside the centrist mainstream that controls the levers of
authority (Imig and Tarrow 2000, 2001). Hooghe, Marks, and Wilson
find that national political parties towards the left and right
extremes take Euroskeptical positions on European integration at
the aggregate level and across the board on individual issues. Van
der Eijk and Franklin also find an inverted U-curve in party
positions as imputed by-voters
(figure 2.3).3
3 To pick up the inverted U-curve one must include parties or
groups at the extreme, but these tend to have small memberships and
support, and as a result tend to be underrepresented in data sets
such as the Manifesto Research Group data or the European elections
survey.
European integration and political conflict 239
There is a substantive explanation for this and a strategic one.
Substantively, the European Union is a centrist project for the
simple reason that mainstream parties - Christian democrats,
liberals, social democrats, and conservatives - have dominated
national governments, national parliaments, the European
Parliament, and the European Commission. Parties on the extreme
left and extreme right, along with contentious social movements,
have little love for institutions they have done almost nothing to
create. They attack European integration as an extension of their
domestic opposition. The extreme left views European integration as
an elitist capitalist project that isolates decision-making from
citizens in the interests of powerful corporations. The extreme
right views European integration as an elitist supranational
project that weakens national autonomy and traditional values.
Strategically, positions on European integration are framed with
an eye to sustaining or challenging existing dimensions of domestic
conflict (Steenbergen and Scott, chapter 8). Centrist political
parties converge in support of European integration because they
want to bottle up a potential new dimension of conflict (Hix 1999a;
Scott 2001). They cannot assimilate European
-
integration into the dominant left/right dimension that
structures national competition, and so they try to avoid competing
on it. This has the considerable advantage of dampening an issue
that could otherwise fracture mainstream parties. Conversely,
parties that are toward the left and right extremes want to raise
the heat by taking anti positions on European integration. While
such parties are minor contenders on the established left/right
dimension, they may be far more successful if they can impose a
cross-cutting conflict on which they are more united than their
mainstream competitors.
Time
The relationship between left/right orientations and the degree
of support for European integration depends on when one is asking
the question. European integration is a swiftly moving target. Two
decades ago, in the early to mid-1980s, the chief issue on the
agenda had to do with sweeping away non-tariff barriers to trade.
This meant limiting public subsidies to industry, bypassing
protectionist product standards, opening up public procurement, and
reducing red tape - all of which was music to the ears of those on
the right. It was no coincidence that the Single European Act of
1986 was negotiated by nine center-right governments and three left
governments, the most important of which was the Mitterrand
government in France which had tried, and failed, to implement an
interventionist socialist program. A majority of those on the left
were prepared to go
European integration and political conflict 240
along with the market project, but they regarded it merely as a
first step to a social democratic "Citizens' Europe" (Hooghe and
Marks 1999; Ladrech and Marliere 1999).
Following the Maastricht Treaty (1993) and currency union
(2002), the creation of a single European market is no longer a
topic of debate in Euroland. Yet, as Steenbergen and Scott show
(figure 8.1), the salience of European integration increased from
the 1980s to the 1990s. On the agenda now are a wide variety of
proposals for further integration, several of which are more
popular with the left than with the right. These include
market-flanking policies, such as employment and environmental
policy, which draw disproportional support from the left in every
EU member state.
On the basis of content analysis of European party manifestos,
Matthew Gabel and Simon Hix (chapter 5), find that left and right
have switched positions on European integration over the past two
decades. The center-right European Peoples' Party was more
pro-integration than the party of European Socialists in the 1970s;
by the 1990s, the situation was reversed. There is no immutable
relationship between left/right positioning and support for
European integration. As in the American federal system, sometimes
it is the left and sometimes the right that supports more
centralization (or more decentralization). It all depends on what
the status quo is and what one wants to defend or achieve by
reallocating authority.
Digging deeper
We refine the analysis of the connection between domestic and
European contestation in two ways, by examining variation between
issues and variation across countries. We discover that particular
aspects of European integration evoke responses that are indeed
constrained by ideology. The search for such connections leads us
to analyze new politics contestation alongside left/right
contestation. We also examine how territory mediates ideology
across the member states of the European Union. We discover that
national institutions frame how European integration plays on the
left/right divide.
Disaggregating by issue Left/right
The connections between domestic and European contestation come
into sharp view when one examines specific sets of issues.
European
Gary Marks 241 integration is diverse in the particular sense
that the issues it raises are more weakly
intercorrelated than the issues that make up the left/right
dimension (see Brinegar, Jolly, and Kitschelt, chapter 4, n. 8) 4.
Both left and right can support more European integration. It
-
depends on what issue one is talking about. So, for example, the
left favors more integration in employment policy, while the right
favors market integration. At the aggregate level, when one asks
about European integration in general, such contrasts wash out.
There is not much difference in the degree to which left and right
support European integration as a whole. This is reflected in the
weak association between left/right and the standard Eurobarometer
question concerning "more or less integration" (Gabel and Anderson,
chapter 1) 5.
An issue-based approach tells a different story. When Gabel and
Anderson examine citizens' views on "what kind of integration,"
rather than "more or less integration," they find that a left/right
dimension underlies public attitudes. The items that load most
heavily on this dimension are "improving equality of opportunity"
(for minorities and women), "more help to the poor and socially
excluded" (and to the Third World), "support for poorer EU
regions," and "protect[ing] consumers."
European issues that have to do with the political regulation of
the market are most closely connected to the left/right dimension.
According to the Hooghe-Marks model set out in the Introduction,
the centerleft supports political integration in order to create
European regulated capitalism with the capacity to regulate
markets, redistribute resources, and sustain partnership among
public and private actors (1999). The project of regulated
capitalism at the European level is rooted in Jacques Delors'
decade-long presidency of the European Commission (198594), and his
effort to build an espace organise around social and cohesion
policy. Regulated capitalism is an ideological project - and is
opposed by those on the right who consider market integration a
worthy goal, rather than a point of departure for further
integration.
This is consistent with Bernhard Wessels' findings for interest
groups (chapter 9). He discovers three coalitions at the European
level: a bourgeois alliance of Christian democrats, conservatives,
and industrial groups; a labor alliance of social democrats and
labor unions; and an alliance of "the weak," composed of greens,
regionalists, and environmental
4 Kris Deschouwer makes the point that differences across policy
sectors are particularly pronounced under multilevel governance
(2000: 11). On complexities of the left/right dimension see Elff
(2002).
5 Similarly, van der Eijk and Franklin note that left/right
placement is correlated only with their more policy-relevant
measure of preference for unification. Gabel and Hix note that
left/right distinguishes European political parties on economic
issues, but not on basic constitutional questions such as what
powers should be delegated to the European level.
European integration and political conflict 242
and consumer groups. The latter coalitions are most in favor of
further Europeanization and strengthening the European
Parliament.
We find that the location of national political parties on the
left/right divide constrains whether they support or oppose
European integration on policies related to regulated capitalism.
Employment policy is a prime example. The further to the left a
party is located on the left /right dimension, the greater its
support for a European employment policy (Hooghe, Marks, and
Wilson, chapter 6; Thomassen and Schmitt 1997: 172). The
relationship is strongest for mainstream parties - social
democratic, Christian democratic, liberal, and conservative parties
(r = 0.75) - but it is significant across all parties, despite the
fact, as noted above, that extreme left and extreme right parties
tend to be opposed to just about any shift of competence to the
European level. Left/right positioning exerts a similar constraint
on cohesion policy, which funds infrastructural and training
programs in poorer regions in an effort to increase their economic
growth.
The issues that motivate the classic left/right divide have to
do with liberty versus equity, free markets versus government
steering, and individual economic freedom versus collective rights.
These encompass a fair share of conflicts in capitalist society,
but they do not bear directly on questions relating to the
territorial allocation of authority in a multilevel polity. In the
past, socialists have fought for state centralization to
counterbalance the power of property and concentrated private
ownership of industry, but this does not translate into the demand
for more authority at the European level. The reason for this is
that social democrats are also defenders of the national
institutions they have done so much to create. To the extent that
social democrats have successfully created national systems of
welfare, industrial relations, and health care, they fear that
European integration may undermine them by intensifying regulatory
competition. Many social democrats echo Fritz Scharpf in stressing
that the EU is biased towards negative integration, that is,
towards market-creating and market-enabling policies, rather than
market regulation (Scharpf 1996; 1999). Only if further integration
were to undo this bias could one be sure that shifting competencies
to the European
-
level would be a step toward regulated capitalism. If the bias
remains - and it is deeply rooted in the European Court of Justice
- then Europeanizing public policy will be self-defeating from a
social democratic perspective.6 Hence, the left/right divide does
not speak directly to the territorial allocation of authority.
6 Euroskepticism on the left is reinforced by the view that the
weakness of a European identity precludes redistributive policy at
the European level. According to this line of argument, the absence
of a meaningful European demos limits the legitimacy of the
European Parliament, and hence its effectiveness for European
regulated capitalism.
Gary Marks 243
This is what Jacques Thomassen, Abdul Noury, and Erik Voeten
find ((chapter 7). They diagnose three distinct issue dimensions
for members of the European Parliament. The first is an
integration/independence dimension composed mainly of
constitutional issues that engage the territorial allocation of
authority (including the general question of increasing the range
of responsibilities of the EU, and strengthening the European
Parliament). The second is a left/right dimension that extends the
concern with state and markets to the European level (including
whether to create an EU employment program versus concentrating on
the single market), and the third is a libertarian/traditional or
new politics dimension based on law and order and lifestyle
issues.
The left/right dimension constrains support for European issues
that have distributional consequences within, rather than among,
member states. This is consistent with a bounded rationality
explanation of response to European integration. The strategic
response of an organization to new issues depends on its prior
ideology, which acts as a lens through which it interprets new
opportunities or challenges arising on the political agenda
(Kitschelt, Lange, Marks, and Stephens 1999). Groups that mobilize
functional interests within national states - political parties and
functional interest groups - are particularly responsive to the
distributional effects of a European issue across domestic groups.
They are primed, so to speak, to interpret European integration in
the light of their ideological concerns. Conversely, organizations
(such as national and regional governments) that mobilize
territorial interests are particularly responsive to the
distributional effects of issues among territorial units, as I
discuss below.
New politics
By the same logic, one would expect that EU issues engaging
lifestyle, gender, environment, participatory decision-making, and
national culture to be most closely associated with the new
politics dimension within member states. Items that load strongly
on the new politics dimension include those that ask whether
protecting consumers, controlling immigration, increasing EU
transparency, protecting human rights, and protecting national
cultures should be key priorities for EU activity (see Gabel and
Anderson, chapter 1). Hooghe, Marks, and Wilson (chapter 6) find
that the position of political parties on the new politics
dimension is strongly associated with their support for an EU
environmental policy (r = 0.61; sig. > 0.01) and for an EU
asylum policy (r = 0.57; sig. > 0.01).
European integration and political conflict 244
In some respects, the new politics dimension is more intimately
connected to European integration than is the left/right dimension.
New politics conflicts engage the "nation" and its defense,
alongside individual choice versus traditional values, the
environment,, and participation versus hierarchy. Those on the
right of this dimension oppose European integration for essentially
the same reasons that they oppose immigration: both infuse
foreigners into the society; both threaten the national community.
The Flemish Block's campaign slogan in the 1999 Belgian election
was "In charge of our own country," an update on their earlier "Our
own people first." The defense of national sovereignty lies close
to the heart of those on the TAN
(traditional-authoritarian-nationalist) side of this divide, not
because national sovereignty is useful for other ends, but because
it is intrinsically valued.
-
This distinguishes the new right from market liberals. Market
liberals view national sovereignty in terms of its implications for
economic exchange. They are opposed to barriers to trade, and they
therefore support strong international regimes that can facilitate
market integration, even if this eviscerates key national state
competencies, including monetary control. At the same time, market
liberals oppose the creation of a powerful and legitimate
continental authority that could be used to control markets. The
European orientations of those on the right of the left/right
divide are nuanced, unlike those on the new right.
Hooghe, Marks, and Wilson (chapter 6) conclude that a party's
position on the new politics dimension is considerably more
powerful than its position on the left/right dimension in
predicting its support for integration across each of the seven
issue areas they examine. Radical right parties are now by far the
most Euroskeptical of any of the eight party family groupings in
Europe, including the radical left. Conservative parties that lean
to the TAN side of the new politics dimension - emphasizing
traditional or authoritarian values - tend to be more Euroskeptical
than those that do not. The relationship is weaker for new
politics/green parties on the other side of this dimension, except
on issues, such as the environment and asylum, that relate directly
to their core concerns. This is consistent with Wessels' finding
that of the three alliances he distinguishes, it is the new
politics alliance that is most supportive of European
integration.
Models
Of the four models that we set out in the Introduction, the one
that appears most valid at the level of issues is the Hooghe-Marks
model. Several contributors to this volume stress that the moderate
left has become more
Gary Marks 245
supportive of European integration on issues related to
regulated capitalism, and that the moderate right has become
skeptical of integration beyond market-making. But the pro-EU
orientation of the moderate left is not written in stone. It was,
for example, not evident before the great market reforms of the
1980s. In 1984, according to Leonard Ray's data on party positions,
social democrats supplied the largest reservoir of opposition to
European integration (1999). However, since the early 1990s,
debates about the balance of European and national policy-making
are intelligible in left/right terms.
The research reported in this book goes considerably beyond the
models set out in the Introduction. First, we have discovered a
connection between new politics and European integration. There is
good reason - and some evidence - to believe that new politics
contestation is intimately related not only to particular policy
choices, but also to fundamental .constitutional issues raised by
European integration. Such a connection, is consistent with the
dogged opposition to European integration on the part of radical
right parties in recent national elections, including those in
France and the Netherlands in 2002, where the National Front and
the List Pim Fortuyn raised the heat on European integration.
Conservative parties in the UK and France have been deeply riven by
conflicts between market liberals who are pragmatic on issues of
national sovereignty and new politics rightists who reject European
supranationalism.
Furthermore, the models we set out in our Introduction say
nothing about territorial variation in the ideological bases of
European contestation. The Hooghe-Marks model hypothesizes
variation among the issues that make up European integration, but
assumes that the European Union is ideologically homogeneous. We
need now to relax this assumption and theorize about how left/right
structures positioning on European integration in different
countries. Territorial variation is as fundamental to an
understanding of European contestation as variation across issues,
and I turn to this topic next.
Disaggregating by territory
The European Union both tames and intensifies territorial
politics. It tames territorial politics by creating a web of mutual
dependencies that reduce - and perhaps eliminate - the possibility
of war among mem ber states. The EU routinizes international
relations within a system of multilevel governance. It
internalizes - and domesticates - territorial relations by
transforming diplomacy among states
-
into the making, implementation, and adjudication of laws. I
have already described one decisive outcome of this process:
ideological conflicts that cross-cut
European integration and political conflict 246 territorial
conflicts and that meld domestic groups of one ideological stripe
or another into transnational coalitions. This was Jean Monnet's
hope and goal, but it is one side only of European integration.
European integration intensifies territorial politics and
intensifies the national. It does this both within and among
countries. It does so within countries by generating insecurities
that provoke a nationalist reaction. Chapters in this volume detail
the way in which the radical right mobilizes anti-European feelings
in defense of national authenticity. European integration
undermines national sovereignty - and citizens understand this.
Barriers to economic competition within Europe have been dismantled
at the same time as the capacity of national states to ameliorate
the effects of competition - either through welfare or fiscal
subvention - has narrowed. Citizens who have the least to gain from
economic integration because they lack mobile skills and capital,
and who feel personally vulnerable, are most likely to support a
TAN ideology: traditionalism, authoritarianism, nationalism.
Root-and-branch opposition to European integration fits comfortably
with reactionary defense of the nation, and radical right parties
now make up the largest voting bloc of outright opposition to
European integration across the EU.
European integration exacerbates territorial conflict among
countries because it engages national (and regional/local)
governments in a process of ongoing bargaining over a range of
policies that formerly were determined within, rather than among,
national states. To the extent that such policy-making involves
redistribution and the territories in question have a capacity for
strategy-that is to say, they are collective actors, not merely
aggregations - so the outcome will be intense territorial
bargaining. Intergovernmental institutions - the European Council
and the Council of Ministers - are key venues for such bargaining.
In the European Parliament such territorial conflicts fragment
ideologically based party fractions.
Territorial variation may refract ideological coalitions. The
allocation of a particular policy competence to the European level
may have dissimilar - or even contrary - consequences in different
countries. Distinctive political and economic institutions filter
how actors apply their ideological preferences to European issues
(cf. Eichenberg and Dalton 1998; Hall and Gingerich 2001; Hall and
Soskice 2001; Hix 1999b; Kitschelt, Lange, Marks, and Stephens
1999). This is the point of departure for the chapters by Cees van
der Eijk and Mark Franklin (chapter 2), Leonard Ray (chapter 3),
and Adam Brinegar, Seth Jolly, and Herbert Kitschelt (chapter 4).
Van der Eijk and Franklin observe that "It is the dynamics of the
domestic political arena that here and there brings forth a
connection with either the right or the left." Ray's thesis is
that:
European integration and political conflict 247 In those nations
where the prevailing national policy regime is closer to the ideal
preferences of "leftist" individuals, support for integration
should be concentrated on the right side of the political spectrum.
Conversely, in nations where national policy is relatively far from
the preferences of "leftists," the left will be more supportive of
integration as a way to achieve, at the European level, outcomes
unobtainable under a purely national regime (chapter 3).
Brinegar, Jolly, and Kitschelt find compelling evidence that "In
redistributive welfare states it is the left that opposes further
EU integration, in liberal-residual welfare states the right"
(chapter 4). The chapters in this book analyze the domestic
ideological underpinnings of the debate concerning European
integration. We have gone furthest in probing how European
integration is connected - or not connected - to the left/right
divide in a variety of arenas for several kinds of actors. This was
our main objective when we began this project. We have raised the
question of how European integration is related to the new politics
dimension. And we have begun to inquire into the way that territory
mediates ideology across the European
-
Union. The final section of this chapter no longer encapsulates
the findings of previous chapters, but takes some tentative steps
in linking two lines of analysis we discuss in some detail
throughout the book. Readers who seek in this conclusion a concise
overview of our project and its conclusions can stop here. What
follows is meant, at best, to suggest some fruitful avenues for
further inquiry.
Combining issues and territory
Let me begin by combining two basic strategies adopted by the
contributors to this book: an issue-based approach, and an
appreciation of the way in which territory (e.g., via national
institutions) mediates ideology. When one analyzes the territorial
dimension of European contestation from the standpoint of variation
across issues, it is useful to consider the mediating effect of
national institutions as a variable rather than a constant. At one
extreme, there are issues that have decisively different
distributional consequences from country to country. As Brinegar,
Jolly, and Kitschelt inform us, the distributional impact of a
European welfare policy in a liberal uncoordinated economy, such as
the UK, is very different from that in a social democratic
coordinated economy, such as Sweden. Hence, left and right take
different positions in different countries. At the other extreme
are issues - the decision whether to expand EU competencies in
higher education, for example - that have consistent domestic
distributional implications across EU countries. In such cases, one
would
Gary Marks 248 expect the pattern of support and opposition from
left and right to be the same across countries.
Figure 11.1 hypothesizes how this variation constrains the
positions that individuals and groups adopt on an issue and the
coalitions they form. The idea that motivates this model is simple:
the greater the territorial congruence of a policy's distributional
impact, the more one can expect domestic actors to line up the same
way.? The extent to which one finds ideologically based coalitions
depends on whether a policy has the same distributional effects
across its territorial subunits. 8 Conversely, the greater the
territorial heterogeneity of distributional effects across
territory, the more one can expect ideologically inconsistent
coalitions. In this case the outcome will be "unholy alliances" -
ideologically mixed coalitions that combine left and right groups
on both sides of the issue.. 9
A policy may also engage territory directly by distributing
values across constituent units. What might one expect when
European integration allocates values not only within countries,
but across them? This question is logically independent from the
question of the homogeneity of domestic distributional impacts. The
reasoning here follows the same format as in figure 11.1, but with
a twist: how does the allocation of values across constituent units
affect coalition building?10 The logic of this analysis is
multilevel. It can apply to states in a transnational polity,
regions within a state, or localities within a region.
Figure 11.2 summarizes these ideas. It explains coalitions in
terms of the interaction of territory and ideology. The y-axis in
figure 11.2 represents the extent to which the domestic
distribution of costs and benefits is homogeneous across territory,
in this case, across the member states of the European Union. If
domestic costs/benefits are similar across countries, two things
follow: first, left and right can be expected to line up in a
consistent way across countries; second, European-wide,
ideologically pure, coalitions will emerge. The x-axis represents
the extent to which an issue involves distribution across territory
(i.e., across EU member states). If there is extensive distribution
of values across territory,
7 Homogeneity/heterogeneity of distributional impact" and
"consistency of ideological positioning" may serve as useful
concepts for evaluating political cohesion in federal political
systems. These concepts provide analytical leverage on the
following question: "To what extent is there a common ideological
playing field across a particular territory?"
8 In the European Union, the chief territorial subunits are the
member states, but the logic of the model applies within as well as
among countries.
9 Figure 11.1 spells out these pure types as answers to the
questions posed in the thicklined boxes. The model is recursive in
that coalitions make policy, which affects the allocation of values
(the dotted arrows in figure 11.1).
-
10 I define "values" in their broad, Eastonian, sense.
Distribution (or allocation) of values involves who is allowed to
do what as well as who gets what.
European integration and political conflict 249
Figure 11.1 A model of coa li t ion formation.
two things follow: first, this will give rise to territorial
conflict; second, coalition-building will be territorial.
Keep in mind that the two logics of allocation, preferences, and
coalition-formation - ideology and territory - are intrinsically
independent of each other. Hence, particular policies may give rise
to one, both, or neither of the patterns of coalition-formation.
Figure 11.2 illustrates four possibilities: Ideology trumps
territory in the lower-left quadrant. Here coalitions arise from a
consistent
pattern of distributional conflicts within countries in the
absence of distributional conflicts among countries.
Ideology and territory are both powerful sources of
coalition-building in the bottom-right quadrant. This quadrant
describes a consistent pattern of distributional conflicts within
countries, but one that is cross-cut by territorial coalitions
arising from high levels of redistribution among countries.
Neither ideological nor inter-state conflict structures
coalitions in the top-left quadrant. Territorial distribution is
low, and national institutions filter the impact of issues so that
the positioning of left and right varies from country to country -
creating "unholy alliances."
European integration and political conflict 250
-
SIMILAR Figure 11.2 Patterns of contestation.
Territory, but not ideology, structures coalition-building in
the top-right quadrant. This quadrant combines unholy alliances
with national coalitions arising from high levels of inter-country
distribution. Ideological lines of conflict are muddied by national
institutions; inter-state conflict is dominant.
The analyses of this volume generate a set of expectations about
the location of actors, institutions, and issues within this
two-dimensional space. With respect to actors, we expect the
positioning of political parties on European issues to be more
ideologically consistent in left/right terms than the positioning
of citizens. That is, on any given issue, political parties should
be located further towards the bottom of figure 11.2. Contributions
to this volume indicate that the preferences of national political
parties on a subset of issues arising from European integration
Gary Marks 251
are sometimes quite closely related to left/right position -
certainly far more so than for the public at large. I have already
noted that Gabel and Anderson and van der Eijk and Franklin
discover only a weak and insignificant linear association between
left/right positioning and support for European integration among
the general public. In contrast, Thomassen, Noury, and Voeten find
that the left/right dimension explains 23 percent of the variance
in MEP preferences across fifteen issues. Hooghe, Marks, and Wilson
conclude that the effect of left/right positioning for national
parties is significant across a subset of European issues,
including employment and environmental policy. We therefore expect
that left/right constrains party positions on European integration
more strongly than it constrains the positions of citizens.
This expectation can be grounded in political psychology. One of
the best-established generalizations in the study of political
attitudes is that there is wide variance among citizens in
their
-
political knowledge and sophistication, and that this is
associated with the extent to which citizens structure their views
of the political world (Jennings 1992; Kinder 1998). Elites are
more likely to understand and use political abstractions, such as
"left" and "right." Correspondingly, their attitudes towards
political objects are usually more stable and more structured.
Party leaders do not just structure their views coherently, they
also inform the public about new issues that arise and how they
should be evaluated (Steenbergen and Scott, chapter 8).
In terms of arenas, our expectation is that those dominated by
political parties - e.g., national parliaments and the European
Parliament - should be located further toward the ideological
quadrants at the bottom of figure 11.2 than arenas dominated by
territorial organizations, such as national governments. Political
parties compete on ideology; national governments compete by
representing distinct territorial communities. 11 The logical
implication is that the European Council and the EU's Council of
Ministers will be biased towards the top right-hand quadrant of
figure 11.2, while European and national parliaments will be biased
towards the bottom left-hand quadrant.
Coalition-building in these arenas is likely to be mixed if both
sources of distribution are present. Each arena exhibits this in a
characteristic way. European-wide ideological coalitions are most
visible in the European Pariament, but in the face of territorial
redistribution one can usually trace national tensions within party
fractions. Territorial coalitions
11 Political parties representing the demands of particular
territorial minorities are an interesting exception.
European integration and political conflict 252
are most visible in the Council of Ministers, but on
ideologically salient issues, these are modulated by the party
composition of national governments.12
Finally, the authors of this volume find wide variations in the
interaction of ideology and territory across issues. There are two
big questions here. What kinds of issues are likely to generate
ideological (in)consistency across the left/right divide? How are
countries grouped on whether the left or the right is most
supportive of European integration? Let us take these questions in
turn.
Our expectations on ideological consistency across the
left/right divide are informed by the regulated capitalism
hypothesis. In recent years the left has come to support further
integration on issues that flank market integration. These are
policy areas - employment, the environment, social policy, cohesion
policy-that were part of Jacques Delors' project to create a
citizens' Europe. We would therefore expect these policies to be
placed in the lower-left quadrant of figure 11.2.
At the opposite extreme (in the top-right quadrant) are
constitutional issues. These often allocate values (power or
resources) across countries, but have murky consequences for the
allocation of values within countries. So, for example, the
distribution of voting weights in the Council of Ministers engages
countries as contending players, but has no clear consequences for
who gets what within countries. Thomassen, Noury, and Voeten find
that membership in a particular party family shapes the views of
MEN on socio-economic left/right issues and libertarian-traditional
issues, while nationality is the most powerful influence for
constitutional issues. Foreign and defense policy are similar in
that they allocate values among countries more transparently than
they allocate values within countries.
Our expectation concerning national patterns of conflict is
rooted in the varieties of capitalism literature (Hall and Soskice
2001; Soskice 1999). Assuming that European integration leads to
policy convergence, integration should be supported by those on
theright and opposed by those on the left in leftist policy
regimes, and supported by those on the
12 On the role of territoriality in the EU see Egeberg (2001),
Sbragia (1993) and Ansell and Di Palma
(forthcoming), particularly chapters by Christopher Ansell,
Stefano Bartolini, Giuseppe Di Palma, and Sidney Tarrow. The
effects of cross-cutting pressures surface in research on the
European Parliament, where voting can be measured. Thomassen,
Noury, and Voeten find a high level of party group discipline in EP
voting, "an indicator of the success of European parliamentary
institutions in framing European politics according to ideological
and party lines rather than national interests" (Thomassen, Noury,
and Voeten, this volume; Hix, Noury, and Roland 2003).
Gary Marks 253
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European integration and political conflict 253
left and opposed by those on the right in rightist policy
regimes (Ray, chapter 3).13
A second line of theorizing explores how variation among party
systems structures debate (Steenbergen and Scott, chapter 8). I
have noted that there is a strong curvilinear relationship between
party positioning on the left/right divide and support for European
integration. Extreme parties of the left and right mobilize publics
against European integration, and where only one or the other is
present, one can expect this to have a significant impact on the
sign of the coefficient for left/right positioning on European
integration. Where an extreme left party exists in the absence of
an extreme right party, I expect a positive association between
left/right position and support for European integration.
Conversely, where an extreme right party exists in the absence of
an extreme left party, this should give rise to a negative
association.
Locating issues in the schema
Where are European issues located in the two-dimensional space
conceptualized here? Figure 11.3 illustrates where national
political parties stand on seven policies, and figure 11.4
illustrates public opinion positions on thirteen policies. 14
13 As Brinegar, Jolly, and Kitschelt argue: "In residual,
liberal welfare states, leftists who would like to see more
economic redistribution would obviously see European integration as
a benefit, if it moves national conditions from the status quo to
at least a conservative, but more encompassing and redistributive
welfare state. Rightists, in that setting, will be opposed.
Conversely, in encompassing, egalitarian, universalistic, social
democratic welfare states, leftists who are fond of the national
status quo can only fear that European integration will lead away
from their personal ideal point. In such countries, the left is
likely to be more anti-European and the right more pro-European ...
In countries with conservative encompassing welfare states, EU
integration should not be significantly related to left/right
ideology, but cross-cutting" (chapter 4).
14 Figure 11.3 is derived from expert evaluations of positions
of national parties on a sevenpoint scale that ranges from strongly
opposes integration to strongly in favor of integration (Marks and
Steenbergen 1999). For example, our question on the EP is as
follows: "We would like to start with the party leadership's
position on the powers of the European Parliament. Some parties
advocate that the powers of the European Parliament should be
drastically expanded, to remove the so-called `democratic deficit.'
Other parties argue that the powers of the European Parliament are
already extensive and that there is no need to expand these powers
further. In your judgment, where does the leadership of the parties
listed below stand vis-a-vis expansion of the powers of the EP?"
Figure 11.4 is based on question 30 in Eurobarometer 54.1,
conducted in the fall of 2000, which reads: "For each of the
following areas, do you think that decisions should be made by the
[nationality] government, or made jointly within the European
Union? 1 = nationality, 2 = jointly within the European Union, 3 =
don't know." These scores are recoded in analysis.
254 Gary Marks
-
Figure 11.3 Party positions on European issues.
Ideological consistency across territory (the y-axis) is
operationalized as the proportion of countries where left and right
line up in the same way. I measure this by estimating regressions
for left/right position on support for European integration for
each policy in each country, and comparing the signs of the
coefficients (i.e., the slope of the regression line). A policy
located at the bottom-most point on the y-axis indicates that left
and right take consistent positions with respect to each other in
all countries. A policy located at the top-most point indicates
that in 50 percent of countries the left takes one position with
respect to the right, and in the remaining 50 percent the positions
of left and right are reversed. The reference line in figures 11.3
and 11.4 is located at the point where 75 percent of EU countries
have a consistent pattern of left/right support. This may be a
conservative benchmark from which to evaluate ideology in the
European Union: it demands that a given pattern of left/right
support is three times as frequent as the alternative. I measure
diversity of national preferences for each policy by calculating
the mean score for political parties (figure 11.3) or for
individuals (figure 11.4) in each country, and then calculating the
interquartile range
European integration and political conflict 255
-
Figure 11.4 Public opinion on European issues.
of these country averages. The interquartile range for each
policy is represented on the x-axis.15
The results for ideological consistency are roughly in keeping
with the expectations set out above. In figure 11.3, two policies
have almost complete ideological consistency: employment and
environment policy. These policies are integral to regulated
capitalism, and directly engage the question of the role of the
state in the economy. Foreign policy, fiscal policy, and the powers
of the European Parliament are, as we expect,
15 The scale in figure 11.3 is support for integration measured
in six intervals from 1 (strongly opposed to European integration
in this policy area) to 7 (strongly in favor of integration in this
policy area). The scale in figure 11.4 is from zero (strongly
opposed to European integration in this policy area) to 1 (strongly
in favor of integration in this policy area). The simple
correlation of interquartile range scores for the five common
policy areas in figures 11.3 and 11.4 is 0.55, which is not
statistically significant given the small number of cases. It is
interesting to note that the standard deviations of national
preferences aggregated for national political parties are
significantly associated (r = 0.83, sig. = 0.081) with the standard
deviations among government positions across five policy areas that
are common to the Marks and Steenbergen data set and the compiled
by Mark Aspinwall (2002).
Gary Marks 256
the least consistent. Regional policy, however, is further north
than we expect.
Comparison of figures 11.3 and 11.4 reveals that political
parties are more ideologically consistent across the EU than is the
general public. Of the five policies represented in both figures,
political parties are more consistent on employment, environmental,
regional, and foreign policy, and less consistent only on asylum
policy. The simple correlation between public and party scores for
ideological consistency on these five policies is 0.46:
insignificant given the small number of cases.
-
In figure 11.4, as in figure 11.3, policies that have to do with
regulated capitalism exhibit relatively high levels of ideological
consistency. Education, employment, and social policy are in this
camp, while Third World aid and asylum policy have obvious
connections to it. However, the public shows much less ideological
consistency on environmental policy than do political parties. As
we expect, foreign policy and defense policy have little
ideological consistency.
Before concluding, let us take a brief look at how ideology
plays out across the territory of the EU. Certain countries stand
out as exceptions to the patterns of ideological consistency
illustrated in figures 11.3 and 11.4. Across the seven policy areas
and fourteen countries for which we have data for national
political parties (108 cases in total), there are twenty-seven
cases where the right is more pro-integration than the left. Three
countries - Denmark, Greece, and Sweden - account for seventeen of
these." In the remaining countries, the connection between
left/right and European integration is consistent: the left is most
favorably oriented to European integration in 89 percent of
country/policy cases.
For the general public, 59 cases out of a total of 182 (thirteen
policy areas across fourteen countries) have either no left/right
constraint on European positioning, or have the right more
favorably oriented than the left. Three countries stand out.
Sweden, Denmark, and Finland account for thirty-four, or a little
over half, of these fifty-nine cases. In the remaining countries,
the left is favorably oriented to European integration in 83
percent of country/policy cases. Variation in the articulation of
left and right on European integration appears as great, or
greater, across territory as across policy areas.
So, clearly, there are strong national patterns in the data.
They appear to broadly match expectations derived from variation
among types
16 The concentration of contrary cases in Denmark, Greece, and
Sweden is even greater when we undertake the same analysis for the
consistency of new politics ideology. These three countries account
for eighteen of twenty-five contrary cases.
European integration and political conflict 257
of capitalism and variation among party systems. For public
attitudes, the simplest explanation of national variation is to
invoke a proper name: Scandinavia (Svasand and Lindstrom 1996). A
dichotomous variable that splices the Scandinavian countries apart
from the rest explains almost 60 percent of variance where the
dependent variable is the number of policies for each country in
which the left is more supportive of European integration than the
right. This is in line with Ray's and Brinegar, Jolly, and
Kitschelt's argument that the prevailing type of capitalism in
a
-
country interacts with personal ideology, and that in
redistributive social democratic welfare states, it is the left
that has most to lose from European integration, while the right
has most to gain.
This variable does not have much strength for political parties.
To explain the territorial pattern of ideology for parties it may
be more fruitful to examine a more proximate factor: the
presence/absence of extreme parties. A dichotomous variable with
the value 1 for a country having an extreme left party but no
extreme right party is significantly associated with the
ideological consistency of public support for European integration,
explaining an estimated 32 percent of the variance (see table
11.1).
Concluding remarks
Our focus in this volume has been on how conflict over European
integration connects - or does not connect - with the dimensions of
contestation that structure politics within European societies. Our
endeavor is "second generation" in that it departs from the
analysis of levels of support for
Gary Marks 258 European integration, which has dominated the
field of EU opinion research for the past twenty years. Whereas
levels of support can change quite quickly over time (Eichenberg
and Dalton 1998), patterns of conflict are far more stable. Lipset
and Rokkan stressed that the interaction of social cleavages,
rooted in the national revolution, Protestant Reformation, and
industrial revolution in the sixteenth to early twentieth
centuries, maintained a tight grip on party competition through the
1960s and, they speculated, beyond. An adjective that comes to
their minds when discussing change is "glacial." By following them
in investigating patterns of conflict, we seem to be on firm
ground.
Or are we? Recall that in left/right terms, the character of
support and opposition for European integration has changed
decisively over the past two decades. The European Union is a
moving target, not just because it evokes quite rapidly changing
levels of support, but because the essential nature of the beast
has been transformed from a market-making to a polity-making
process. Twenty years ago, the right supported further European
integration in order to achieve an integrated market. The bulk of
the opposition came from the moderate and far left. Today, it is
the right, particularly the radical right, that opposes further
integration, especially in the areas most favored by the moderate
left - e.g., in employment policy, environmental policy, and asylum
policy. The left is more favorably inclined to integration in every
single policy represented in figures 11.3 and 11.4 but one: foreign
policy. As economic and monetary integration have passed from
contentious issues into accomplished facts, so the focus of debate
has shifted from creating a market to regulating it. As a result,
conflict about the future of the EU more closely resembles conflict
within member states, pitting a left in favor of a more active,
caring government against a right defending markets and economic
freedom.
If one takes the period as a whole, it is clear that there is no
intrinsic connection between being on the left or right and being
pro- or antiintegration. In principle, as the Hix-Lord model
assumes, the territorial organization of authority is orthogonal to
functional conflicts that motivate left vs. right at the domestic
level. Alternative architectures of multilevel governance do not
translate, once and for all, into left vs. right conflict. The
Hooghe-Marks model is most appropriate for the post-1980s when one
breaks open European integration into its constituent issues. A
significant subset of European issues involves distributional
choices that are closely related to left/right conflict.
But our efforts to understand precisely how European integration
is linked to domestic conflicts have raised questions that go
beyond the models we began with. Three stand out as challenges for
future research.
European integration and political conflict 259
We need to theorize territorial variation in ideological
positioning as well as variation across issues and across time. We
need to explore links between new politics and European integration
alongside those between the left/right divide and European
integration. And we need a theory of coalition-building that
encompasses conflict among constituent polities as well as conflict
within them.